9.11.11

“I was seeing a spectator to something so unfathomable” that it could not be described in words or even contained in visual terms, says photographer/writer Virginia Bunker about Sequence, her commentary on the devastating events of September 11, 2001, in New York City. Her diptych isolates a moment in time that, for many survivors, will forever bisect life into the day before, and the day after.

The viewpoint of Sequence could be that of someone working downtown on that clear September morning, “of someone looking across from Brooklyn Heights, or someone in Japan watching the news, or someone like me, watching it here,” she says. At once describing the intimacy and the anonymity of the terrorist attacks that took thousands of lives in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., Sequence conveys the deep and instantaneous shock experienced by people around the world.

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Virginia Bunker is a Tacoma artist who lived in Manhattan in the 1990’s, honing her craft and working at a private photo laboratory pulling prints for the likes of Irving Penn, Horst, Avedon and Condé Nast art director, Alexander Lieberman.